Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 July 2005 00:51:28
I was reading Dave's Culture and Spirituality wiblog a few weeks ago and he mentioned the author Russell Hoban. My mind prickled at the quote from the book Kleinzeit - I'd never heard of Russell Hoban but the writing was fun.
So when I ambled down to my local library to look for some holiday reading, I searched for Hoban. Only one book of his in the whole region, a relatively recent Bloomsbury edition of The Medusa Frequency. I borrowed it and had most of it read before we even left. Marvellous writing, it reads as an intriguing interconnectedness of ideas rather than a straightforward plot, touches on the futility of artistic creation and the roundaboutness of life, explores some links between myth, imagination and reality, is grittily set in 80s London. One thing I did find is that I was a little set back by my unfamiliarity with the myth of Orpheus, whose head is a major player in the story. Quick wikipedia search fixed that: he's the guy who invented the lyre and could sing and play so beautifully that the trees and rocks would move closer to hear him.
Anyway, here's a quote from The Medusa Frequency, chosen because it struck something in me more than for its representation of the novel as a whole:
The entrance to the Orpheus & Tower Bridge Club was a modest glass door like that of a small hotel. By then I understood that the main fact of this particular evening was the novembering of it, the pinky-orange hibiscus lamplight, the clear bright darkness between the lamps, the smell of roasting chestnuts, the coming to a point of the dwindling year; I went past the door without stopping, I didn't want to fill in a form.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I'll definitely be looking out more Hoban as soon as possible.